Zelda Fitzgerald

ABSTRACT: EASEL of a painting of Washington Square Park by Zelda Fitzgerald. The painting shows the Washington Square Arch in the background and a family procession in the foreground. The family includes a regal-looking couple in front, with two babies in baby carriages following behind them, and, finally, two dogs trotting behind the baby carriages. The woman in front is wearing a wedding dress and the man is in an officer's uniform. The text accompanying this painting reads: “The evolution of Zelda Fitzgerald–from high-living, unstable wife of Scott to frustrated-feminist icon–may undergo further revision, to accomplished minor artist, with the publication this month of “Zelda: An Illustrated Life” (Abrams). The volume reproduces eighty of Zelda's surviving paintings–figures, still-lifes, Biblical tableaux–and many of the intricate paper dolls that she made for her grandson before her death, in 1948. Eight years earlier, following her husband's death, Zelda began a series of romantic cityscapes of New York and Paris, one of which, “Washington Square” (1944), is shown here. A gouache on paper, it was done shortly after the wedding of her daughter, Scottie–a time that, Zelda wrote to a friend, “brought back the excitement of those days twenty years ago when there was so much of everything adrift on the micaed spring time and so many aspirations afloat on the lethal twilights that one's greatest concern was which taxi to take and which magazine to sell to.”

ABSTRACT: Conversation of two people eating in a restaurant, describing to each other all the other places they have apparently ever eaten in. They go to great lengths to tell each other how well-fed they have been. The waiter comes and says in French if they have liked the place, and they don't understand what he's talking about.